The Posies play anniversary show at Volcanic

Seattle alt-rockers celebrate 30 years with tour, album reissues

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Seattle alt-rock band The Posies reunited its lineup from its 1993 breakthrough album "Frosting on the Beater" for a 30th anniversary tour that arrives at Volcanic Theatre Pub on Monday. The band, from left, is Mike Musburger, Ken Stringfellow, Jon Auer and Dave Fox. (Alan Lawrence/Submitted photo) - Bulletin

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Seattle alt-rock band The Posies reunited its lineup from its 1993 breakthrough album "Frosting on the Beater" for a 30th anniversary tour that arrives at Volcanic Theatre Pub on Monday. The band, from left, is Mike Musburger, Ken Stringfellow, Jon Auer and Dave Fox. (Alan Lawrence/Submitted photo)7448117

Thirty years ago, as grunge was taking over Seattle, The Posies were the odd band out.

Singer-songwriters Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow met in the mid-’80s while the former was in high school, and the latter was in his first year at the University of Washington. The two kindred spirits wrote a batch of songs that would eventually become The Posies’ 1988 debut album “Failure,” and began searching for band members.

“We were from Bellingham, (Washington); it wasn’t that cool at that time. We were young; we weren’t — we didn’t wear the uniform of a punk rocker or an underground, avant-garde person,” Stringfellow said recently from his home in Tours, France, a week before kicking off The Posies’ 30th anniversary tour in Canada. The tour hits Volcanic Theatre Pub for the band’s first Bend show Monday.

“We liked what we liked, and some of that was obscure and some of that was not, and some of that was old and some of it was new. We were just kind of music fans, basically, is what you would describe us as — devout music fans. And it was hard to convince people that what we had was worth doing as a band. I think people wanted something a lot edgier.”

“Failure,” which introduced the meticulous songcraft and soaring harmonies the band would become known for in the ’90s, was recorded solely by Auer and Stringfellow at Auer’s father’s home studio and initially intended as a demo.

“We recorded every song we had, and then playing it for a couple (of) friends, they were like, ‘This kind of sounds like a record; it’s better than a demo,’” Stringfellow said. “It’s pretty cool. It is what it is, obviously — a kind of modest recording; it’s not really slick, but it’s well-recorded and it’s cool. … At the time, I was really just discovering all music, old and new, so I was trying to put all the influences I could find in there.”

The album took off at local radio stations, and soon drummer Mike Musburger and bassist Arthur “Rick” Roberts completed the band’s first lineup. A second album, “Dear 23,” was released on DGC Records — the eventual home of Nirvana — in 1990.

“We’re basically already on this avalanche of stuff, and we just rode it — we surfed the avalanche for a couple of years. Then Seattle happened,” Stringfellow said.

The band’s subsequent DGC albums — 1993’s breakthrough “Frosting on the Beater” and 1996’s “Amazing Disgrace” — moved in a heavier direction. Although “Frosting on the Beater” produced a number of singles including “Dream All Day,” The Posies never captured the attention many of its grunge contemporaries did, and split briefly after releasing 1998’s “Success” on Seattle’s PopLlama Records, the label that released “Failure.”

“(DGC) took a gamble on us being much more popular than we ended up being,” Stringfellow said. “They probably broke even on us, but they didn’t make boatloads of cash off us. But they gave us a great opportunity, and put us in a great context being presented in a catalog with Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub, and later Nirvana and Weezer. It was great company to keep. I wish we’d sold more records for them, and we tried really hard, but we also — we’re committed to making a certain kind of thing that has a kind of boutique appeal.”

The 30th anniversary tour coincides with expanded reissues of the band’s three DGC albums on CD and vinyl (“Dear 23” drops June 15; “Frosting on the Beater” arrives Aug. 3; and “Amazing Disgrace” on Oct. 28). For the tour, Auer and Stringfellow also reunited with Musburger and bassist Dave Fox, who both left the band in 1994 following the “Frosting on the Beater” recording and touring cycles.

The tour follows 2016’s experimental, keyboard-heavy “Solid States,” the band’s eighth album and third since Auer and Stringfellow reunited as The Posies in 2000 (though the two continued to work together in the reunited Big Star in the interim).

Auer and Stringfellow are focused on the anniversary tour, but the two maintain busy performing and recording schedules beyond The Posies. (Stringfellow was mixing a song for Boston musician Richie Parsons before his chat with GO!) Fans can expect the creative restlessness to continue.

“As I was mentioning to someone else the other day, when you’re in your 20s, you’re basically trying to establish yourself,” Stringfellow said. “Not only are we trying to establish our careers as musicians, but you’re basically making your life up — you’re trying to decide what kind of person you want to be and what your life will consist of and experimenting. At 50 years old, a lot of those experiments are no longer necessary. Of course, I still can develop and new things can come, and then hopefully, I can roll with changes, et cetera. … Everything about what we do these days is way more relaxed just because we’re grownups.”